~{Story}~
The premise about some large organization or something that wants to find something called the “Divine Gate”, which is apparently a myth. They need to find the gate for the sake of finding the gate… nothing more. A bunch of teenagers were chosen to find the gate, because it’s definitely a smart idea to send kids to find something hard, instead of adults. The premise isn’t anything special, however they could have gone somewhere from here, but unfortunately no. The execution is extremely poor. The plot twists, if you can even call them one, are pathetically written. I couldn’t care less about what was going on in this anime. Every time I watched an episode, it felt like I missed an episode since it feels all over the place. And there’s so many things that were left unresolved that it’s ridiculous. It better not get a second season, because I rather have a terrible anime with loose ends, rather than a terrible anime with twice the content. And the funniest thing is that Divine Gate is filled with info dumps, yet, so many things weren’t even properly explained. What the hell is the Divine Gate? Why did edgy MC-kun see it when he was little? Who the hell is that kid that follows MC-kun? Why do most characters wear clothes that match their hair? Was it some kind of trauma they got? Did they forget about MC’s brother at the end?
Story: 1.5/10
~{Presentation}~
I normally don’t want to call an anime pretentious because I don’t know what the studio were keeping in mind when making an anime, but I have a strong feeling that Divine Gate is definitely pretentious. The anime tries so, so, SO hard in making it looks edgy and dark. It only took 5 minutes for me to realize that this is pretentious. That’s even longer than the time it took for me to realize Bubuki Buranki’s completely CGI. When an anime makes you laugh harder than KonoSuba when characters are dying, you know that there’s something wrong. That’s the only enjoyment I got from this anime – comedy. The flashbacks for characters are so poor. They just feel tragic for the sake of being tragic. The direction was so bad that had to search up whether or not Divine Gate was given a director. And even if it had a director, he either must be a goat or a newbie director. The director is actually someone who was called GOAT by some people for directing Bleach, Great Teacher Onizuka, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Kuroshitsuji’s better seasons. Abe-san, where did you go wrong?
Presentation: 1.5/10
~{Character}~
If you think that characters can be a redeeming point after all that, you’re wrong. The characters are so cliché, poor-written, and outrageously plot-device-y that you can’t help but cringe. The main character, Aoto, Is literally one of the most pretentious characters out there. He’s given such a tragic backstory just to make him a tragic character. When they showed his flashback, how he was treated like a dog by his parents while his brother was treated like a god, I laughed hard enough to almost suffocate myself. I wondered to myself am I just a sick, sadistic person, or is this anime so bad it’s funny? I guess it’s the latter. He’s so edgy that it feels like this anime is lighthearted. And his behavior is so damn inconsistent. For most of the part, he acts all gloomy and depressed, however, at times, he seems like his enjoying thing and he never went through that tragic past. What’s going on with that character? Then you have Akane, some dude with daddy issues for 80% of the anime, until suddenly in 1 minute, his personality changes to a daddy’s boy. Talk about sudden. And then you have Midori, some chick whose tragic past happens to do something with her best friend. Then you have other characters that you’ll never remember their names because it’s easier to call them by their hair color rather than searching them up online. There’s a moment in the anime where they introduce a large cast of characters and killed them off the next second. Am I supposed to be emotionally attached to these characters? I’m sure the main characters in this anime are attached so should I be too? When the anime ends and shows off their huge cast of characters’ normal lives, I wonder to myself… who the hell are these people? They’re that forgettable.
Character: 2/10
~{Art}~,
I don’t want to say the art is bad because Studio Pierrot is behind this anime, because they can do good stuff when they care. However, this anime’s art just felt lazy, and the studio tries to cover it up. The art style is really different, but that doesn’t make it better. It certainly makes the anime look more dark and edgy, and also pretentious at the same time. The shading and shadows are downright terrible. The shading should make the colors slowly get darker, not one color and then suddenly black. Look at the characters’ hair for example; it feels like shading it bitmapped onto their hair. The anime will have lighting directly pointed at shadows, but the shadows still remain. Do they even physics? And the backgrounds are pretty lame too. A lot of the time, they use a solid color with so shading. That’s it. Come on, even I can do better with MS Paint.
Art: 3.5/10
~{Animation}~
The animations aren’t too bad in Divine Gate. It’s not very good either. The action animations don’t impress at all. A lot of the fights are CGI heavy and they’re distracting since they’re not that well done. It can look really messy at times. And when they’re not using CGI during action scenes or fights, it just looks very unorganized and cruddy. The flow between frames are pretty bad. However, the normal scenes in Divine Gate don’t looks too bad. It’s not mind blowing, but it works. It’s sad that above average animation is one of the highlights of Divine Gate. However, this might just be one of Studio Pierrot’s laziest work… and that’s saying a whole lot about Divine Gate.
Animation: 5/10
~{Voice Acting}~
The voice acting in Divine Gate isn’t bad nor good, just average. Saito Soma does Aoto averagely. He’s able to make his character sound as edgy and pretentious as the script wants him to be. For most of the time, he sounded uninterested in his role and I don’t blame him. Kakihara Tetsuya does Akane, who does a better job than most of the other seiyuu in Divine Gate. He shouldn’t spent his talent on something else though. Then there’s Itou Kanae who does Midori, and she also does alright, but she did make her character feel irritating at times, but that might just be the scripts fault. Some really talented seiyuu, such as Ishida Akira and Nakamura Yuuichi, are in minor roles, which is disappointing because they can make the anime more enjoyable. Most of these seiyuu feel disinterested when voice acting probably because they also can’t feel for these character. However, the voice acting isn’t bad because at least it didn’t make my ears bleed, but the dialogues sure did (and that’s the presentation that’s lacking).
Voice Acting: 4/10
~{Music}~
Finally, the best part about Divine Gate – the OP. The OP, “one-Me two-Hearts”, isn’t just the best thing about this anime, but one of the best things about this season. The OP is a personal favorite of mine as it really makes my mood. However the rest of the episode doesn’t. Just listen to the OP, then drop this anime as if it’s hotter than the sun. The ED, “CONTRAST”, is alright. It’s nothing to special, but it doesn’t hurt when you listen to it. However, Divine Gate can never be good in a category as there’s one major flaw in its music, which is its background music. The background music is very lackluster and they don’t help to make scenes better, but only worse. When something emotional is happening, but instead you’re laughing, the music only adds to the comedy with its overdramatic music. Even the music is pretentious.
Music: 5/10
~{Enjoyment}~
If you’re wondering whether or not I enjoyed Divine Gate, how can you possibly think that after I barely said anything good about this anime. For half of the time, this anime feels so boring and makes you lose your purpose in life. For the other half of the time, makes you laugh, even though the anime doesn’t want you to. Divine Gate sets the standard high for overly pretentious and unnecessarily edgy anime. Every Friday I was excited to see the new Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and Ajin episode, but Divine Gate always made my day bad. It’s not like this was destined to be bad. The premise can go somewhere, but the execution is just so, so poor that I couldn’t care less about the plot or characters.
Enjoyment: 1/10
In the end, Divine Gate is definitely not worth your time at all. Save yourself the pain and trouble by skipping this one from this season. The narrative is terrible as I didn’t even know what was going on for most of the time. The characters are tragic for the sake of being tragic and their behaviors are so inconsistent. The art style is just a way for the studio to hid their lazy work. This anime is one of the most pretentious (I used this work ten times so far for a reason) piece of entertainment. Search up the OP, listen to it, and never turn back. That’s the only thing you need from this anime.
+ The OP is really good and catchy
- Overly pretentious content that tries to be a tragedy but ends up being a comedy
- Characters are poorly written, inconsistent in their actions, and lack emotional impact.
- Narrative is uninteresting, all over the place, and leaves too many plot holes.
- Art style is pathetic and backgrounds and character designs are lazy.
- Overdramatic music just adds to the lameness.
Overall: 2.4/10
